Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On 3/6/06, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
[snip]
>>What happened to the old ampersand? Just too difficult to get in all those
>>squiggles? Are we that hard pressed (so to speak) for paper?
>
> It does seem to have fallen out of use. About the only ampersands I
> see anymore are in HTML entities, or between parameters in a URL query
> string - and even in that use seems to have been largely replaced by
> a semicolon.
I'm glad to say the good ol' ampersand is still very much alive &
kicking this side of the Pond. I frequently use it both when I'm using
the keyboard & in handwritten stuff. The cursive form of the ampersand
is still AFAIK widely used over here where it tends to look like a lower
case Greek alpha, usually rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise. But i
prefer to write the thing properly :)
It was given status of a separate character in Speedwords and place
before the letter A; it occurs in the words:
& /and/ = 'and'
&e /'ande/ = et cetera
BTW 'et cetera' is not frequently printed as _&c_ this side of the Pond.
--
Ray
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